1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a file-distribution apparatus and a recording medium having a file distribution program recorded therein. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a file-distribution apparatus that distributes an image file received from an image-forming apparatus over a network to a terminal device connected to the network, and to a recording medium having a file distribution program recorded therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
Systems to distribute files among computers can be built by using a file-sharing service and a file-sharing-service protocol, such as the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. For example, a certain folder in a personal computer is used as a sharing folder that can be operated from an image-forming apparatus. In this case, a file of images scanned by the image-forming apparatus can be transmitted to the sharing folder at the personal computer. Since the file-sharing service is included in the operating system (OS) of the personal computer, it is possible to easily build the file-distribution system without adding a dedicated application.
There is an automatic transmission method in the related art, in which a data file and an automatic transmission control file are stored in a memory and the data file is transmitted according to the content of the automatic transmission control file.
However, in order to distribute an image file received from an image-forming apparatus over a network to one or more terminal devices connected to the network, it is necessary for the user of each terminal device that has received the image file to determine whether the image file is an authorized file.
Accordingly, it is required to provide a file-distribution apparatus and a file-distribution system with a simple configuration, which are capable of stopping distribution of an unauthorized file to reduce the burden on the user.
One-to-one correspondence is established between the name of a file to be transmitted and the e-mail address, etc. of a destination in the automatic transmission control file in the above automatic transmission method. It is necessary to describe the file name and information about the destination in the automatic transmission control file for every file to be transmitted. This problem also occurs in a case in which a file is allocated to a folder in the apparatus, to distribute (move) the file to the folder, and a case in which one file is allocated to multiple places to distribute the file to the multiple places.
Consequently, it is required to provide a file-distribution apparatus and a file-distribution system capable of distributing a file to a desired-allocation destination without specifying the allocation destination for every file to be distributed.